Ghost 2022

 My mother-in-law died on Dec. 25 at the age of 95 1/2.  She had severe dementia, but up until the very end, she was still gracious and polite, her hallmark characteristics. I wasn't there when she died, but the staff at her care facility had been looking for signs of her coming death(skin color and feel, depth of sleep), and they had alerted the family so that they were able to be with her when she died. My mother had died two years before, and with both, I wondered at where they were, where they wandered, what they saw and knew when they left their bodies.  At her service, her eldest son, an evangelical minister, talked about the glories of walking on a road paved with gold, able to rejoice in no longer being demented, able to see and hear again with ease, and able to know all in the presence of God.  I thought it curious that he was so sure of where she was and what she was doing, and I wondered to myself if she felt lost and alone, confused by the sudden end of all that she knew. Was she afraid, or, as her son felt, free of all the worries and concerns that burden us in our lives? Or, as my fantasy goes, having searched and having found the perfect new life, was she ready to be reborn as someone else, in another body, with another life to live?

Woman with a Baby 1991

In 1991 my husband and I had two daughters.  One daughter, Ramey, was four at the time, and the other, Teal, was one.  It was a mind blowingly new experience for me.  The two girls, were, of course, polar opposites, so what we had learned from being Ramey's parents didn't really apply to Teal-- completely new rule book.  Having the girls was such a cataclysmic event that I now see my life being divided into two halves: before daughters and after.  I hadn't gone into motherhood with any confidence about the kind of mother I would make, but the powers that be knew what they were doing, and, to my surprise, I found I was actually a capable  mother.  They girls are now adults and recently Ramey presented us with a grandson, who is currently one year old.  I was filled with trepidation about how I would be as a grandmother, all my parenting of babies skills being long forgotten. But once again, the gods smiled on me, and I found myself head over heals in love with this small, extremely powerful little man. The main difference being that this time I know just how quickly time will pass, and that, in the blink of an eye, our new baby won't be as a baby anymore.

Working Face 2021

 

 Almost four years ago my husband, Robert Wilson, retired from his sports medicine practice.  He had always loved art and been drawn to it from an early age. Part of the reason that we worked so well as a couple was because of his deep appreciation of my work.  In his first months being retired, he took a welding class at the local community college, bought himself a welder and a mask, and learned not to wear clothes that might melt or catch on fire. Although he had always kept a hand in making things, he now had the time to really devote himself to it.  He loved it: getting dirty, creating a mess, becoming completely absorbed in the process of making something. He began to draw--landscapes with charcoal and graphite--and then he started the arduous task of learning to use watercolors, drawn to the stark county of Southern New Mexico and the rugged Sandia Mountains that rise to the East of us.  No longer having to live in his head as a physician, he has become the person he was always meant to be. Robert Wilson

Sad Woman/Distant Man

Marriage: Any close or intimate union

Upon googling the differences between men and women this is what I found on the website of  the Relationship Institute.  I thought it odd and weirdly biased, as if written in the 50's, but yet still with some truth to it.

MEN

• A man’s sense of self is defined through his ability to achieve results, through success and accomplishment. Achieve goals and prove his competence and feel good about himself.
• To feel good about himself, men must achieve goals by themselves.
• For men, doing things by themselves is a symbol of efficiency, power and competence.
• In general, men are more interested in objects and things rather than people and feelings.
• Men rarely talk about their problems unless they are seeking “expert” advice; asking for help when you can do something yourself is a sign of weakness.
• Men are more aggressive than women; more combative and territorial.
• Men’s self esteem is more career-related.
• Men feel devastated by failure and financial setbacks; they tend to obsess about money much more than women
• Men hate to ask for information because it shows they are a failure.

 WOMEN:

• Women value love, communication, beauty and relationships.
• A woman’s sense of self is defined through their feelings and the quality of their relationships. They spend much time supporting, nurturing and helping each other. They experience fulfillment through sharing and relating.
• Personal expression, in clothes and feelings, is very important. Communication is important. Talking, sharing and relating is how a woman feels good about herself.
• For women, offering help is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength; it is a sign of caring to give support.
• Women are very concerned about issues relating to physical attractiveness; changes in this area can be as difficult for women as changes in a man’s financial status.
• When men are preoccupied with work or money, women interpret it as rejection.

My Little Pony Introduces Herself to the Galactic by Teal Wilson 2021

This past weekend my husband and I drove to Aspen, Colorado to see an exhibit by our daughter, Teal Wilson.  The exhibit was at Fat City Gallery, in Aspen Colorado, and was a show Teal had been working towards for most of the summer.  I didn't know quite what to expect, but was somewhat apprehensive since I knew it involved "My Little Pony", the iconic plastic toy pony, first developed in 1981, and which has had several reincarnations since. As an artist, and the mother of an artist, I knew to keep my doubts to myself and hadn't either discussed the work with Teal or really known much about it, aside from the fact that it was "My Little Pony".  However, upon seeing the work, I was, as the cliche goes, "blown away"  by what she had done.  The images, 16 in total, were a complex combination of exquisite drawings of My Little Pony and powerful, black ink washes. But it was the titles that made the show so impactful, each one describing a complex and complicated reality that the ponies were caught up in.  Their cute coyness  became something else by the significance of the titles, titles like "My Little Pony and the Second Between Existence and the Gates of Heaven" and "My Little Pony Peers into the Celestial Plane".  She had done that thing that is so hard to do when making an image: she had captured our complete attention, with skill and patience, so that we had to look at the world in an entirely new way, treading the razor edge of both trite and profound.

Stormy 2021

 As a four-year-old child, I did some heavy negotiating with my parents:  I would give up my bottle in exchange for a pair of cowboy boots.  Of course, I needed the boots to ride horses, real horses, not a rocking horse or a stick with a horse head on the end, but a real horse.  Since that time, horses have been an important part of my life, and, consequentially, have been an essential part of the images I make. When my daughters were small, I gave up horseback riding on a regular basis, and no longer owned a horse, but kept my connection with them through my art.  Then, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was given an incredible gift:  a young horse named "Stormy", whose life I got to share—to train, to ride, and to simply just enjoy. 

Dog at the Door 2019

 

 

 

Although "Dog at the Door" is not really a saying(it's"keep the wolf from the door"), it was my way of talking about danger coming, trying to stay safe from problems, worries and difficulties. I did a series of three paintings, all some kind of canine at the door and all about that danger. In  March of 2020 I did another blog about it , Coyote at the Door(Five Trees).  It was interesting rereading the blog and seeing how these paintings still pertained in the little over a year since I wrote it, but also how they didn't.  In the year since, things got worse: George Floyd and Black Lives Matter unfolded, more friends presented with serious health issues, covid raged out of control, the political situation got more and more dire, the capitol was stormed after Biden was elected president and an unremitting drought that continues here in the west, to name just a few things.

But things have also gotten better:  vaccines have been developed to protect us from covid, for the first time in years I didn't get a cold or flu because of wearing a mask, the economy started to turn around, we have a sane president, and best of all, my husband and I, in October, were presented with a beautiful grandson, full of life and promise and hope. Time to open the door and chase that dog away.